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Harriet Tubman: Moses of Her People
Harriet Tubman was born into harsh slavery as Araminta Ross in Dorchester County, Maryland. Tubman married a free African American at 25. Several years later, fearing she would be sold South, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia where she met William Still, the Philadelphia Stationmaster of the Underground Railroad and learned how the system worked.
In 1851 Tubman began relocating members of her family to St. Catharines (Ontario), Canada. Tubman returned to Maryland to rescue other members of her family. She made 19 trips to the South. She is said to have operated without fear of any consequences and inspired bravery and courage in those fearful of escaping even with a $40,000 bounty for her capture. Called "Moses" by those she helped escape on the Underground Railroad, Tubman conducted more than 300 people to freedom using the system. Her trips could take weeks at a time, all the while evading slave hunters and the authorities.
During the Civil War, Tubman served the Union as a soldier, spy and nurse. From Port Royal, South Carolina, in June of 1863, she directed a detachment of 150 African Americans in a raid up the Combahee River, destroying Confederate mines, storehouses and crops, and liberating about 800 slaves. She was denied payment for her wartimes services and returned to Auburn, N.Y. There, she married Nelson Davis whom she had met in South Carolina during the war.
Dedicating her life after the Civil War to helping former slaves, especially children and the elderly, Tubman also became active in the women's rights movement and the AME Zion Church. In 1859 Tubman contracted for seven acres of land and a house from Governor William H. Seward in Auburn, New York, for which she had lenient terms of repayment. It was to this property that she brought her parents after their intial stay in Canada, and where they stayed while she was assisting Union troops during the Civil War. After the war she returned to her home in Auburn and began what was to be her life-long work of caring for aged and indigent African Americans. She was an dedicated member of the AME Church and actively supported the construction of the Thompson AME Church in 1891. In 1896, Harriet purchased 25 adjoining acres to her home on which stood the building now known as the Home for Aged. Here she struggled to care for her charges, and in 1903 deeded the property to the AME Zion Church with the understanding that the church would continue to run the Home. Tubman continued to live at her home, until her own health deteriorated and she was cared for at the Home for the Aged. She died there in 1913 at the age of 92 or 93 and was laid in state at the Thompson AME Church.
In 1995, the federal government honored her with a commemorative stamp.
Courtesy Library of Congress and the National Park Service
